“Esther is a very dear, sweet-looking girl,” said Caroline. “If only she were any one else’s daughter! Though that does not sound civil! But I know my dear husband had the strongest feeling about first cousins marrying.”
“Yes, I trusted to your knowing that,” said the Colonel. “And I rely on you not to be weak nor to make the task harder to us. Remembering, too,” he added in a voice of sorrow and pity that made the words sound not unkind, “that even without the relationship, we should feel that there were strong objections.”
“I know! My poor Bobus!” said Caroline, sadly. “That makes it such a pity she is his cousin. Otherwise she might do him so much good.”
“I have not much faith in good done in that manner,” said the Colonel.
Caroline thought him mistaken, but could not argue an abstract question, and came to the personal one. “But how far has it gone? How do you know about it? I see now that I might have detected it in his tone, but one never knows, when one’s children grow up.”
“The Colonel was obliged to tell him in the autumn that we did not approve of flirtations between cousins,” said Mrs. Brownlow.
“And he answered—?”
“That flirtation was the last thing he intended,” said the Colonel. “On which I told him that I would have no nonsense.”
“Was that all?”
“Except that at Christmas he sent her, by way of card, a drawing that must have cost a large sum,” said the Colonel. “We thought it better to let the child keep it without remark, for fear of putting things into her head; though I wrote and told him such expensive trumpery was folly that I was much tempted to forbid. So what does he do on Valentine’s Day but send her a complete set of ornaments like little birds, in Genoa silver—exquisite things. Well, she was very good, dear child. We told her it was not nice or maidenly to take such valuable presents; and she was quite contented and happy when her mother gave her a ring of her own, and we have written to Jessie to send her some pretty things from India.”